LEDRU-ROLLIN. le-dru'r4'15N'. ALEXAN DRE ACcirsTE 1S07-74). A noted French radi cal. lie was born February 2. 1807. at Foote nay, near Paris. in a house which had olive been Scarron's. He studied for the liar, and was ad mitted in 1830. He was counsel for the defense in most of the prosecutions of opposition jour nals during the reign of Louis Philippe. and obtained a great reputation as a defender of republieans. In 1841 he elected Deputy by the Department. of Sarthe. and became prominent in the Chamber as a member of the extreme Left. lle was the editor of several of the most ad. vanced newspapers of the day. and the author of pamphlet: protests against the repression of public and individual liberties. In 1816 he published au Appel aux trarailleurs. in which lie declared his attitude toward the working classes. He was also an ardent promoter of the reform meetings that preceded the Revolution of 1845. being associated with Lamartine and Louis Mane as an orator of the workingmen, at whose political banquets he advocated the droit pour trarailler ('right to labor') and universal slit fra7e. On the outbreak of the ];evolution he became one of the leaders and advocated the formation of a provisional government. and when this was carried out was intrusted with the portfolio of the Interior. lie was afterwards one of the five in whose hands the Constituent Assembly placed the interim government (May 10, 18481. In this position he showed a certain want of perception, firmness. and In
.lime, 1848. he ceased to hold otliee, and thence forth sought to recover his influence with the extreme demoorats, which lie had partly lost by accepting otfice. lie succeeded partially and ventured on a candidature for the Presidency, obtaining, however, only 370.000 votes (Decem ber, Isis). lit May, 1S4P. he was chosen to the Legislative Assembly, but (be unsuccessful pro test of June 1:Oh against Louis Napoleon's Gov ernment pot an end to his political career. Ile lied to England and he•ame later on associated in London with Mazzini, Kosslith. and other European revolutionist; in the issuing of republi can manifestoes. While there he wrote and pub 11,1(.41 a work against the land which had given him an asylum, La dt'eadenee de l'.tayletcrre 118301. For the next twenty years he lived al ternately in London and Brussels. His name was excepted from the amnesties of 1860 and NO: but in 1870 he was allowed to return to France. In February. 1871, he was returned to the Na tional Assembly, but at once resigned. though later (1874) he sat as a member of the extreme Left in the Versailles Assembly. where he made his last great oration in favor of universal suf frage. dune 3, 1874. lie died December 31, 1571. liis Disrours po/itiquem et t'erils dircrs were pub lished by his widow (2 vols., Paris. 18791.